


Lazarus

by WeCanDance



Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: Abuse, Blood, Death, Gen, Science Fiction, dead bodies, the usual, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25839049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeCanDance/pseuds/WeCanDance
Summary: The scientist returned his gaze to the gore-soaked lab coat and jeans, his brain desperate to believe that’s all it was. But the shape was too distinct to be only that. Flug clutched his unmasked mouth as a sickness rose deep inside him, buckling forwards with a hand on the wall for support, before falling to his knees and heaving.It wasn’t simply a pile of his own iconic outfit. He was looking at his own corpse.
Relationships: Black Hat/Dr. Flug (Villainous)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 82





	1. Freefall

In this moment, Dr. Flug was like a plane with both engines in flames, in fiery freefall, trails of smoke like grey pillars behind him. The imaginary craft gained incalculable momentum, a helpless pilot in the cockpit, wide-eyed and white-knucked on the yoke. There were no brakes in the air, somehow even no wind resistance, and the controls had gone completely offline. A dark and cloudless sky raced past him, plummeting miles in moments. There was no sight or sound, only the singular sensation of falling into chaos.

But Dr. Flug was not in an actual aircraft. It was his very consciousness in free-fall. He wasn’t falling down, or up, or left or right. He was simply falling away, becoming increasingly untethered from the physical plane, each feeling, memory, and neuron winking out of existence. The past was over, the future was destroyed, and even the present was brittle and fickle. The capacity for complex ideas and emotions fell out of his brain like it was a bucket without a bottom. 

In all the tragedy that was his death, of all the inventions not invented and the loves not loved, he somehow took hold of only one lament. How ironic it was, how desperately he had wanted to know the unknown, but it was clear that there was no unknown to know. No hell, no alternate plane, no dreams, no more nightmares. Not even darkness there. 

\------------------------

Lord Black Hat sat at his desk, hardly registering the subtle blinking of the manor’s lights above him. Quill in hand, he pored over documents obtained from the Men Without Hats headquarters. He tapped his fingers on the oak, bloodied gloves laid on the corner of his desk. 

Ever so subtly, a strange scent wafted in. Black Hat almost didn’t catch it as it gently passed in front of him. But, as he inhaled, it gave him pause. It was an off-putting, pungent scent of something significant. Something unnatural was happening, something wrong, and nearby. But he hadn’t tested any laws of nature today, beyond his very existence anyway, had he? He thought back on what he had been doing before getting the documents out to review. 

Black Hat swallowed thickly at remembering his encounter in the lab, eyes traveling to his discarded gloves. 

Certainly, an eldritch demon feeling guilt would be unnatural, and that would explain the shift in the air. But that was also impossible, so that wasn’t it. Something else pressing at the edges of what was physically plausible was happening nearby.

Suddenly, the blinking of the lights intensified, and they fluttered out completely. Black Hat, in darkness, pushed his chair back and stood hunched over with his palms on his desk, the slits of his nostrils flaring. He looked around the room in confusion. 

The lights flickered again and returned. Black Hat blinked, sighed, then straightened his tie and returned to his seat, coughing awkwardly. He leaned back, relaxing the tense muscles in his face. Most likely the surge was simply the result of one of Flug’s unworldly machines. The scientist was surely in his lab right now testing his next extraordinary invention.

Black Hat exhaled and folded his bare hands in his lap. Normally, he would have been angry at the disturbance. Now, he was relieved at the implication that Flug was currently using a machine. It meant he was alri--it meant he was back to work.


	2. Return

A dead man knows no difference between seconds, days, or years, but at some point, after some unknown amount of time, it happened. What was once Flug’s mind and was now a spark of near-nothingness in the nothingness, experienced the smallest vibration. Impossibly thin, hardly-existent tendrils wafted towards the spark, making contact with that which should have been lost to eternity. Ever so gently, the crystalline threads made a fragile connection between the ethereal ember and the physical plane. Over the course of unknown time, they multiplied, strengthened, and formed bonds in the shape of complex patterns that once were. 

More slowly and gently than the way in which he was lost, a preternatural connection eased him back through the darkness, homeward bound. From nothing, to a heavy, oppressive sea, eternal and unmoving. Almost nothing, but not nothing. 

\--------------------------

The machine dinged softly, indicating that the upload was complete. Following its programming, it pumped air through an endotracheal tube and sent a wave of electricity through the formerly still body contained within. 

The form lurched, spine arching as much as it could in the clear tube that contained it. Movement behind soft eyelids. Nostrils flared. Nerves, connected to an unconscious brain, made meaningful for the first time. Slowly, and against nature, a cosmic connection formed in the new body. 

What was once Dr. Flug’s most ambitious and preternatural experiment, over the course of an hour, became Dr. Flug himself. 

\----------------------------

After the top of the tank opened, the scientist inside bolted upright, adrenaline pumping, and tore the breathing tube out of his throat. Fuck if this wasn’t the most disoriented he’d ever felt in his life. He only barely recognized the room where he was sitting, naked and insanely cold, medical machines around him beeping, hardly able to see without his goggles. Having no idea how he had got there. 

Flug found his goggles beside him and pressed them to his face. Then he reached for the pile of neatly-folded clothes, eager for warmth, before noticing something out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t been able to see it before he put his goggles on, but now a section of the wall appeared transparent. 

He approached the wall to peer curiously into his lab, hoping for a clue as to what had happened. 

The room was eerily still, but otherwise mostly as he remembered it, he thought, until he noticed the brownish red pool circling the drain in the middle of the floor. He followed the crimson trail with his eyes until they landed on what appeared to be a lab coat and jeans crumpled at the bottom of a file cabinet. The metal cabinet itself appeared dented in the middle, crunched forwards from impact, as though it were hunched in pain. 

Odd patterns of scarlet smeared on the floor and the damaged file cabinet. Shivering, Dr. Flug squinted and adjusted his goggles to follow a set of reddish prints in the shape of expensive dress shoes trailing from the pile of clothes to the lab’s door. 

The scientist returned his gaze to the gore-soaked lab coat and jeans, his brain desperate to believe that’s all it was. But the shape was too distinct to be only that. He pushed through disbelief to register what it truly was. He swallowed at the realization. Flug clutched his unmasked mouth as a sickness rose deep inside him, buckling forwards with a hand on the wall for support, before falling to his weak knees and heaving. 

It wasn’t simply a pile of his own iconic outfit. He was looking at his own corpse. 


	3. Insurance

The sickness faded and was replaced by curiosity. As he ran his hands over his (new) body, Dr. Flug began to understand pieces of what happened. This smooth, scar-free form was the one he had grown as an insurance policy. This was the room he had built to keep it in. He spied his clothes, a bug-out bag with food, cash, and a fake passport, and a back door. If he recalled correctly, that door led to a series of underground tunnels that led to a train station. 

A feeling of self-satisfaction ran over him. He had hardly realized it at first, but he had cheated death. Not even his supernatural boss had mastered resurrection! He was truly the greatest scientist of all time! Sure, he hadn’t been 100% sure that the Lazarus project would work on a human, but here he was in the flesh! 

OK, but he was still very cold, being in a body with a heart that had only recently started pumping. The scientist quickly got dressed and thought about his next course of action. Of course, to get back to work, he would need to clean up the cadaver. He was not looking forward to that, but he certainly wouldn’t assign the task to 505. He should perform an autopsy to figure out how he died. 

Dr. Flug tugged at his sleeves, trying again to recall what had happened. It was as though the information was contained in an egg in his brain. He felt like he could crack the egg with enough mental fortitude, but it would make a mess. Perhaps it was something to store away for the day in which he had time for therapy. 

He reached for the door between the dimly-lit room and the lab before a sound stopped him. He saw through the one-way glass door that the regular door to the lab opened, and in walked his boss. 

The scientist's heart stopped. He had the urge to flee and never turn back. This panic was worse than the normal reaction he had when he saw Black Hat...now, Flug’s instincts assured him the monster was here to brutally murder the scientist. There was no third body for him to inhabit; the next time he died it would be the real deal.

Flug watched in alarm as Black Hat approached the corpse and kneeled beside it, facing the one-way tinted glass wall from which the scientist was watching. The dark being touched the cold shoulder and shook it. Then he shook harder. He turned the body over, tore off the mask, and grabbed the chin, yelling in the blue-lipped and unresponsive face. Then Black Hat’s form wavered, he grew larger, and mist appeared around him. 

Flug’s fear ebbed to give way to another round of disgust. What was Black Hat going to do when he realized the scientist had died? Celebrate with champagne? Become enraged and take out his anger on 505? Toss the body in the trash bin? Chop it up and send it to his parents?

String up the corpse and use it as a Piñata? Eat it? Flug swore to god, that degenerate creep better not  _ fuck it.  _

He didn’t want to see what was going to come next. Oh, who was he kidding. His curiosity always got the best of him. He watched silently on the other side of the wall. 

Black Hat shivered and blinked rapidly. He took the cold hand, stiffened from rigor mortis and brought it to his own mouth. Flug was certain Black Hat was going to start devouring the body. 

But the scientist, who had just gone through one of the most unlikely situations on the planet, was shocked at what he saw next. Black Hat simply pressed his lips to the hand, as though he were kissing it. But the cruel monster would never... _ kiss _ Flug. He must be tasting him instead.

Then Black Hat, with shaking shoulders, reached down and pushed some bloody hair from the corpse’s dead-eyed face. He continued to stroke the side of the face, over and over, like an animal compulsively licking. Then, the eldritch demon drew the body into his and enveloped it in arms and tentacles, resting his chin on the cold shoulder. Flug tried to read his lips to see what he was saying, leaning in close to hear a soft…

“I’m so sorry.” 

Flug was stunned. Incredulous. He must have been mistaken. Certainly he wanted to bask in the scene before him: the monster whose affection he desperately craved holding him tenderly and offering the apology he had dreamed of. 

He only had to die to hear it. 

Flug’s brain was working overtime to try to make sense of it all. For a full ten minutes, he stood there, mouth agape. For those ten minutes, Black Hat also remained motionless, crouched over and embracing a cold corpse. The only movement was blood leaking from the cadaver’s back, trickling over Black Hat’s arm. 

Flug’s heart turned as he saw his beloved Jefecito in misery. He couldn’t stand by, he should return to the lab immediately and explain that Black Hat needn’t worry, Flug was fine. But, as he reached for the door, a cold and deep fear ran through him. 

Black Hat had always terrified Flug, but now the repulsion was insurmountable. Something in his body said that he should not be near Black Hat, that the creature would surely kill him. 

The scientist swallowed, shivering. He didn’t want to believe it. But he was a man of facts. He would never say it out loud, but the fear so clearly told him how he had died.

Now what? Should he return? This remorseful Black Hat wouldn’t kill him again. He would be thankful the scientist was alive, then allow him to return to work. Then assign deadlines. Then work would pile up...deadlines would pass...Black Hat would react…

The man sighed and turned, scooping up his bug-out bag. His partner had a lab and resources for bioengineering that he knew he could use. 

Dr. Flug would return to Hat Manor. But not now.

Not until he had a new insurance plan. 


End file.
